


An Extremely Uneventful Subject

by adiduck (book_people)



Series: No Choir [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Hopeful Ending, I think so anyway..., Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mourning, legalese
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26713750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/book_people/pseuds/adiduck
Summary: Cody's run into one last hiccup before they go to Mos Eisley tomorrow. Obi-Wan decides he will try to help.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: No Choir [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1844878
Comments: 73
Kudos: 313





	An Extremely Uneventful Subject

**Author's Note:**

> I know I know, 2k after a fic that was 21k? Gotta love that consistency of word count. Truth this, this one's been mostly finished for actual weeks, but would have made zero sense without Put It Down, so here we are.
> 
> Also, this is the first fic in the series that does not heavily feature Tiny Prophet Luke, and I miss him already. Already in the planning stages for the next fic, so he'll be back in that part, pinky promise <3

Obi-Wan found Cody outside on the hut’s front stoop, spinning his pad absently between his fingers, watching the second sun sink below the ever-changing horizon. The light caught his hair and tipped it in flame in the growing blue of a Tatooine evening. Obi-Wan paused, abruptly not wanting to disturb this hypothetical last moment of stillness for Cody, here on this little stoop in this horrid hut. Or perhaps, abruptly not sure if he’d be welcome.

The decision was taken out of his hands a moment later as Cody turned, his profile outlined by the dying sunlight, an eyebrow raised in inquiry as his shoulders set in invitation. Obi-Wan sighed, caught, and stepped out of the doorway and into the cooling air.

“If you have your completed form, Cody, I’ll place them together by the door so we don’t forget them tomorrow,” he offered, clasping his hands together in his sleeves and settling back on his heels, voice quiet in deference to the stillness of the world around them. Cody blinked and then hummed, looked down at the pad as though just remembering its presence in his hands.

“I’m not finished filling it out yet,” he replied, voice just as low, and Obi-Wan found himself blinking as well.

“...Oh?” he prompted, when Cody didn’t say anything else, and stepped further out onto the stoop, enough to catch it as Cody’s lips thinned in a tell-tale sign of embarrassment, familiar enough to take Obi-Wan’s breath for a long, heart-shatteringly aching moment.

“Nearly done,” Cody amended. “I have to pick a surname.”

...Oh. Oh. Obi-Wan sat down, close enough that Cody could lean towards him or away, to his preference. “Ah,” he said, and Cody’s lips softened into a wry quirk of lips.

“Mm,” Cody agreed.

Obi-Wan nodded, slowly, and they both turned to look out over the desert, twilight well and truly falling, casting the world in shades of blue-gray. “If there’s a way I can assist,” Obi-Wan finally began, careful, careful, “I would be happy to do it.”

Cody… sighed, shoulders slumping a bit in defeat. “I could always go with ‘Fett’,” he said, in a tone dryer than the air they both breathed in. “I’d rather not. Owen and Beru would probably let me use ‘Lars’ or ‘Whitesun’, but I’d have to ask them, and I’d rather be finished tonight.” He paused again. “Besides, neither really feel right.”

“You want your own,” Obi-Wan guessed, and let it carry the silent question of whether he wanted to use Obi-Wan’s name.

“...I want my own,” Cody agreed, and let it be a kind no. Obi-Wan nodded, found himself unoffended, and they both went back to silently looking out over the ever-shifting dunes.

“Alright,” Obi-Wan said finally, and turned back to him. “I understand that, generally, you and your brothers wish an appropriate name to come to you organically, but as we are on a time crunch…” He lifted an eyebrow, meaningfully. “Vod?”

Cody snorted, but turned towards him as well, head tilted a bit into Obi-Wan’s space, lips curled in amusement. “No.”

“Ghost,” Obi-Wan suggested. Cody pulled a face. “...Sunburst.”

“Really?” Cody asked, and he was definitely laughing at Obi-Wan on the inside.

“It’s an appropriate Tatooine name,” Obi-Wan pointed out. “Skywalker. Darklighter. Whitesun.”

“No,” Cody said.

“Gold,” Obi-Wan suggested, warming to this game. “As I doubt Beru will let you paint her walls with it.”

“Clip,” Cody shot back, definitely smiling now. “In honor of the one I added to my belt for _your lightsaber_.”

“If you want to be ‘Cody Clip’,” Obi-Wan returned, and let mischief curl his mouth into a smirk, “far be it for me to dissuade you.” Cody laughed aloud this time, shaking his head.

“Something practical,” he said, finally. “Something that wouldn’t be out of place as a natborn name.”

“You don’t want this to be where you express your creative side?” Obi-Wan asked, amused.

“I named myself ‘Cody’,” Cody drawled.

“You named yourself after the mando'a word for ‘glory’,” Obi-Wan returned, because Cody absolutely had, and had since gone quite mad if he thought Obi-Wan would believe him to not have a flare for the dramatic. They knew each other too well for that.

“But it sounds,” Cody said, deliberate to hide his own amusement, “like a natborn name,” and then it was Obi-Wan’s turn to laugh. He shook his head. A practical name, that nonetheless made sense for Obi-Wan’s commander. He hummed as he thought.

“Marshal,” he suggested, and Cody froze. The humor around him and echoing in the air froze with him, suddenly enough it left Obi-Wan’s ears ringing, like a struck gong.

“I’m not,” he said, carefully, “a Marshal Commander.” The ‘we’ve talked about this’ went unsaid, loud enough to choke, in the spaces between the words.

Obi-Wan turned to look at him, let himself frown.

“I note you haven’t said ‘no’,” he offered, carefully.

“Sir,” Cody returned, voice full of frustration.

“Obi-Wan,” Obi-Wan reminded him.

“Hypocrite,” Cody shot back, and the silence descended again with a crash.

Obi-Wan breathed in, breathed out, gave his hurt and frustration to the Force. “This is not the same,” he said, carefully.

“Of course not,” Cody responded, bitterly.

“It’s not,” Obi-Wan insisted. “I never wanted to be a General.”

“I was conscripted into the army _at decanting_ ,” Cody snapped, and started to rise. “Don’t--”

“Exactly,” Obi-Wan snapped back, and Cody fell silent. Obi-Wan breathed. “You have always been a Commander. You were a Commander before you were ever born. It has _always_ been a part of you. I was never defined by my rank as General, Cody. It was thrust upon me--”

“You--”

“Let me _finish_.” Cody’s mouth closed. He stared, eyes burning, for another moment, and then sat, slowly, the desert night spread out behind him in a wash of black and blue. Obi-Wan shut his eyes, breathed again to marshal his thoughts.

“Cody,” he began, again. “Serving alongside you, and the 212th, and the Seventh Sky Battalion, and the Third Systems Army, was one of the great privileges of my life. But--” he took another breath “--I was not meant to be a General, for all...for all I _know_ I was _your_ General.” He opened his eyes. Cody’s jaw had tightened, in that way that meant he was keeping everything he wanted to say trapped behind his teeth. It was, like many things about Cody these days, both achingly familiar and utterly, blindsidingly out of any context Obi-Wan could find. He smiled at Cody, and knew it came out sad. That was fine. Force knew they could both use a bit more emotional honesty in their lives, these days.

“But you, my dear Commander,” he continued, quiet in the space between them, “ _you_ were born for the role.” He tilted his head and caught Cody’s eyes, now, tried to push his meaning through his words. “And you were _great_.”

There was another pang in the Force, like a blaster bolt striking home. Obi-Wan stopped talking, let the silent echo of it reverberate down both their nerves. Cody didn’t speak. Obi-Wan continued. “You were the best of even those like you. You earned every promotion you received. Your insight and strategic mind snatched victory from the jaws of defeat more times than I can count. You brought the Republic to within _moments_ of winning that war and you commanded the Third Systems Army _by right_ , and they took it from you.”

Cody sat, still as stone in the night, eyes made black in the absence of light burning into Obi-Wan’s own. He said nothing.

“It is not the same,” Obi-Wan said again, for lack of anything _else_ to say, and shut his eyes. “My not wanting to be known as ‘General Kenobi’ is _not the same_ as your being forced, by the very people who stole everything you are from you, to go by anything other than ‘Marshal Commander Cody’.”

And then, abruptly, it was too much. So much, he thought, wryly, for emotional honesty. He stood. “But I’ve interrupted and upset you,” he said, into the echoing void around them, loud against only the wind through the sand, Cody’s breaths, Obi-Wan’s own breaths, regular and sharp in his ears. Cody remained silent. It was an answer, of sorts, all on its own. Obi-Wan breathed out, and didn’t let it become a sigh.

“My apologies, Cody,” he said, and turned away. “It is your decision, of course. As I said earlier, you can place your pad with mine near the door when you come in, so we don’t forget the flimsiwork in the morning.”

He walked across the stoop, opened the door and blinked at the light pouring through it, at the little hut they would be locking up tomorrow and leaving. Not permanently--not really--but… long enough, often enough, that Owen was drawing up plans for an extension. Long and often enough to justify the contract they would all be signing, binding them all legally as a family. Obi-Wan had not had a paper trail since his last family had been wiped away, in three words and a matter of moments.

His own pad was by the door, turned off and waiting, ‘Ben Kenobi’ typed carefully in uniform aurebesh in all the right places on the saved flimsiwork, and a signature at the bottom. _Ben_ Kenobi. He’d never be Obi-Wan again, except perhaps to the man behind him.

It felt like another end.

The lamps of the hut reflected off the bright speeder paint on every wall, shining as it caught the uneven coat, the texture of the stone beneath. Obi-Wan breathed in, and allowed himself the thought, however fanciful, that the colors entered his lungs with the oxygen--bright, and uneven, and alive. He let them flow out of him on the exhale, tinged with grief, and an old name. “Good night, Cody,” he said, quietly, glancing back to see his Commander, head bent down to read his pad, wordless. Obi-Wan shut the door on the silence.

* * *

_**Confidential License and Certificate of the Creation of a Domestic Unit** _

_**Domicile of Declaration** _

Lars Homestead

Location: Latitude 82 N, Longitude 34 E

Description: Operating moisture farm and homestead

Registration Number: ANC-99812HC

Yearly Earnings: 20,000 Peggats

Expected Increase Upon Creation of Domestic Unit: 5,000 Peggats

_**Minor Dependant(s)** _

Number of Dependent(s): 1

Name(s) of Dependent(s): Luke Skywalker

_Per Tatooine Family Code Section 24.113, underlisted and undersigned [hereinafter “parties”], do hereby declare intent to maintain/hereinafter carry responsibility for the above-named dependant(s) until age of majority._

_**Affidavit** _

The parties declare under penalty of perjury under Tatooine Family Code Section 24.113 that they meet the requirements for a domestic unit under Tatooine Family Code Section 24.113 to the best of their knowledge and belief. Further, the parties declare that there is no legal issue to the creation of a domestic unit. They acknowledge receipt of the information required by Tatooine Family Code 24.113 and hereby apply for a Confidential License and Certificate of the Creation of a Domestic Unit.

**_License for Domestic Unit_ **

I, the undersigned, do hereby certify that the below-named parties to the to-be created domestic unit have personally appeared before me and proved to me on the basis of satisfactory evidence to be the persons claimed. The parties having further declared that they meet all of the requirements of the law, and having paid the fees prescribed by law, authorization and license is hereby given under penalty of perjury under Tatooine Family Code Section 24.113 for the parties to put forth their status as a domestic unit in accordance with the laws of the legal center of Mos Eisley and the planet of Tatooine, effective of below-detailed date.

TORO THIRDMOON

_Toro Thirdmoon_

Zhellday, Day 7, Month 6, 4 AFE

MET-2378911

_**Parties to the Domestic Unit** _

OWEN LARS, _Owen Lars_ , Zhellday, Day 7, Month 6, 4 AFE

BERU WHITESUN, _Beru Whitesun_ , Zhellday, Day 7, Month 6, 4 AFE

BEN KENOBI, _Ben Kenobi_ , Zhellday, Day 7, Month 6, 4 AFE

CODY MARSHAL, _Cody Marshal_ , Zhellday, Day 7, Month 6, 4 AFE

_**Name Changes, if Applicable** _

None

**Author's Note:**

> I should note that I have no idea how money works on Tatooine, and so I made it up. If the amount I put down doesn't make sense, I am happy to be informed. XD;
> 
> Also, yes I _did_ rip off a marriage license from California to create the domestic unit license. No I will not be taking questions. <3
> 
> I'm at [adiduck](https://adiduck.tumblr.com/) on tumblr! Come chat! :D


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